Kirby calls for laws to catch up

Federal Parliament needs to act on genetic law reform proposals and not dump them in the too-hard basket, High Court judge Michael Kirby said yesterday.

Speaking at a forum on genetic privacy, Justice Kirby said technological changes and breakthroughs posed challenges best tackled by Parliament rather than by judges.

In May the Australian Law Reform Commission released the results of a two-year inquiry, a 1200-page document with 144 recommendations on genetic issues. The report urged quick action on issues such as discrimination on genetic grounds, privacy of genetic sampling and stronger supervision of genetic research.

It recommended that employers not be allowed to collect or use genetic information, that a high-level body be established to oversee national guidelines and that new laws be put in place to prevent DNA testing without consent.

"Increasingly decisions are going to be made about us all on the basis of our genetic information profile," Justice Kirby told the forum in Melbourne.

"I hope with the Senate, that the Parliament will examine the Law Reform Commission's proposals and not simply put them into the too-hard basket."

DNA technology raised many issues, he said. "A big question . . . is whether we should permit the reopening of acquittals for evidence that comes in later and indicates a person is guilty. Should we permit that? Would that lead to unsettlement is society? Would it destroy the closure which the criminal process brings?"

Daniel Hartl, a Harvard University genetics professor, said the political process had been slow in catching up with the implications of DNA.

Most people had six to 12 genes inactive that were mutants - if they were active they would kill or disable. "Your human genome has information you might not want to share," Professor Hartl said.

He said there were unresolved issues of ownership of an individual's DNA, of who could share that information and in areas such as telling people who may be affected by a genetic condition after a test on a family member.

Bruce Budowle, from the FBI's forensic laboratories, said law enforcement needed to regard DNA as an investigative lead, not proof of guilt. He said 30 per cent of DNA tests by the FBI excluded people from possible involvement in a crime.

In some states, DNA testing had expanded to include not just those convicted of crime, but those arrested - raising issues of what happens to those genetic samples, who owns them and what they can later be used for.